


Telling Tales

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Series: Beginning Again [2]
Category: Mirrormask (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-11
Updated: 2007-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes growing up is hard to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Telling Tales

His name was James.

There was something a little bit odd about that. It was too simple a name to fit him well, and he had this suppressed flair for the dramatic. Helena had pulled a face at hearing his name for the first time, but that was outside the office and no one could see. It was too late for a formal interview and test, but they could give him one the next day, after the next show.

After the show, when her parents placed him on a probationary period with the circus, Helena had crept up to him. "Did you really want to join us? Did you really want to run away and join the circus as a child?"

He smiled at her then, a smile that was everything like Valentine's and nothing like it at all. "Of course I did. Did you think I'd tell tales to your Da?"

It wasn't the same, and his name was James.

"I think your stage name should be Valentine," Helena had replied.

He didn't say anything for a moment, and then looked at a spot just next to her left ear. "You think so?"

"It's a good name, with a touch of honor and mystery. An important name."

For the show, his name was Valentine.

The first show was a success. His lilting accent added cadence to the show, layers of stories to add. Adding a third to the juggling act sparked all kinds of wild tosses – higher, lower, more than pins and balls and the fake knife. Helena could tell her father was pleased, and her mother reported an increase in ticket sales.

She hadn't dreamt of the two queens or the city from her drawings again. It made her almost sad, not really knowing what happened after she had placed the mask on her face.

The second show was better. Smoother, less kinks, better tosses. He was warming up to the crowd, and they were warming up to him. He wasn't as nervous with all those eyes looking in on him, and the mask he wore helped a bit. Helena had designed a simple costume for him, a purple tunic and black pants, and a half mask that covered his face. It was tan and purple, the purple also painted over his nose and mouth. If he thought it strange that Helena didn't wear a mask when everyone else did, he didn't say so.

"Why did you name me Valentine?" he asked after the third show. There was a softness to her voice when she called him Valentine, something he couldn't place.

"Would you like to hear a story?" she had replied.

"Oh, I love telling tales," he had said with a grin. It countered her silly mood, and they went back to her trailer.

"I had a dream while Mum was sick," Helena began softly. Her drawings covered the wall of her trailer, a city of fantastical proportions and with strange creatures in the streets. "It's a city of dark and light and such..." She looked down at her hands and twisted her fingers about nervously. "I'm not telling it right."

"Tell it how it needs to be told," James said, sitting down at her desk. "From the beginning, if you like, since that makes it easier to follow." He picked up one of her dolls, a fractured amalgam of things she had found during their travels about England. "Or tell me about this."

She grinned and picked up the doll. "I made her out of seven different broken marionette dolls I found all about." She didn't point out the seams in her dollmaking. "I know how to tell it. I'll tell it how it happened."

"Sounds fair," he said, reasonable as always.

"I met Valentine running away from the darkness," Helena began slowly, looking at the map of the dream city on the wall. "Here. Right here," she said, pointing to the spot. James got up and stood next to her, and suddenly it felt as though she was back in the dream world, Valentine behind her and trying to look through the windows. "The darkness made things crumble away, it turned everyone to ashes and they fell to the ground in pieces."

"That's not a nice dream," James murmured.

"Not all dreams are," Helena whispered. "Valentine said he was a very important man, with a tower and everything. He juggled, too. We found out that the Queen was ill, and I offered to find the charm that would help her wake up. Valentine just tagged along." She traced their path, and described the library, the mask shop, the Very Useful Little Book. James particularly liked the part about the Very Useful Little Book.

"He did something bad, didn't he?" James asked, voice gentle.

"He let the Dark Queen take me," Helena said softly. "He had been my friend, and explained things, and he let them take me for as many jewels as he could carry. And for a time, I was the Dark Princess."

"Was it awful?" James asked seriously. "It must have been, if the Princess wanted to run away and leave it all behind."

"I... It sounded nice," Helena said, shrugging. "But it's different when you live it, I suppose. You think it's fantastic, but it's never what you think it's going to be."

"Sounds like life in general," James observed.

"Could be," Helena admitted. "As the Princess, I had fancy black dresses and ice cream and was locked away in a little room of a jar, and I had to do everything the Dark Queen wanted. And I knew the world was going to die, because the real Princess was a selfish creature that wanted her own freedom no matter what the price," Helena whispered, voice cracking. "I'd said horrid things to my mum before this, I know I did. I almost couldn't help myself. I wanted her to hurt as much I'd been hurting."

"It's the way of being sixteen," James replied when Helena paused. "It's what teenagers do."

Helena looked at him, lips trembling. "I'd hurt her badly. I've never done that before."

"Because you're a good girl, Helena. You could never willfully hurt the ones you love."

She smiled at him. "Thank you."

"So why would you want to name me after a faithless rogue?" James asked, when Helena looked back at the map without speaking.

She laughed. "He wasn't a rogue. Not really." She smiled at him then, and it left him breathless with the sight of it. "He came back, and we found the mask. A mirrormask, the charm to save us all. And he apologized to his tower, which came to save us from the Dark Queen. We saved the world, but only just."

"You did," James said. "You said you had to put the mask on to make things right."

"I did. I guess... I think it's because I knew then I wasn't going to be alone. That I didn't have to fix everything all by myself. I think that's what the dream was telling me."

"Then it's a good dream after all."

"I still think Valentine's a good name," Helena said brightly, moving away from the map on her wall. She put the marionette doll back where she usually kept it on her desk. "Even before the dream, I would tell stories about Mr. Valentine, come to save the city. I think it's a romantic kind of name, lofty without being too pretentious. A solid and important kind of name. I think it's rather all right that he became a solid and important kind of man in my dream."

James looked at the map, wondering if he would see anyone peering back at him through the windows. He couldn't, and shook his head at the whimsy. "You know why I didn't want it in the beginning?" he asked. Helena shook her head and looked at him with wide eyes.

"It's my middle name."

"No!" she cried, a wide smile on her face. "Is it really?" She leapt up from her perch at the edge of her desk. "Oh, but it's perfect for you. You're a wonderful Valentine!"

He laughed at her enthusiasm. "I never used to think so. I used to tell my Gran that it was a horrid kind of name and I should never have gotten it."

"Oh, no..." Helena shook her head. "What did your parents think?"

"Well, they weren't there," he said, and scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "See, my Da was a bit of a drunkard, and my Mum was about your age perhaps when she had me. So, 'twas up to my Gran to raise me up right. Mum went gallivanting about, and she still does. I don't talk to her much at all. Gran's a good one, though. She made sure I went to college and all that. She made sure I did well."

"Well, you strike me as an important kind of fellow," Helena said with an easy smile.

James smiled, shaking his head self deprecatingly. "All those literature courses... Your dream is like a fairy tale, you know. An epic tale from a story book. A magic charm to save the land from destruction, and an unlikely hero to find it."

She caught his hand on impulse, and James stilled, heart in his mouth. "I still say, you make a great Valentine. He's a good friend, a good soul. Whatever else he did or said, he made things right again. I think you're the same way."

He kissed her then, gently, aware that he was six years older and it wasn't any kind of right. She was inexperienced, not sure what to do with her lips or hands or how to stand. He cupped her face in his hands, pressing lightly. He tried to tell her with his lips what he couldn't bring himself to say. He knew he would stumble upon the words, trip them up and mangle them. He wasn't that far from being a teenager himself, and he knew he had parted from his own tangled family as badly as Helena had before her dream. _Don't you know how beautiful you are, Helena? Don't you know how wonderful you can be?_

Breathless, Helena looked up at him with wide eyes and parted lips. "Oh."

"Yeah," he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets. He had mucked it up something awful, he must have. She looked at a loss for words.

Helena stood on her tiptoes and grasped his shoulders. "You're a wonderful Valentine, James. I couldn't ask for any better."

Her return kiss was soft and awkward. He opened his mouth under hers and wrapped his arms around her, cradling her. He deepened the kiss, startling her, but she eased into it. When the kiss ended, they stared into each others' eyes.

"You should stay," Helena whispered. "Stay with the circus, I mean," she added hastily.

He smiled at her, a goofy kind of grin. So he hadn't mucked it up after all. "I'd like that."

His name was James, but he was Valentine, too.

The End


End file.
